


Get Their Good Tidings

by PhoenixFalls



Series: Just As They Wished It To Be [7]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: California, Established Relationship, Interracial Relationship, M/M, POV Character of Color, Pre-Canon, Reunions, Scenery Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 17:44:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1826749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhoenixFalls/pseuds/PhoenixFalls
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first time since college, Rhodey's going to be living in the same state as Tony, only an hour's drive away. So of course Tony's stuck halfway around the world for Rhodey's first two months in California.</p><p>California welcomes Rhodey anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get Their Good Tidings

**Author's Note:**

> This is little more than a shameless love letter to the landscapes I've spent most of my life in.

Rhodey gets transferred to Edwards Air Force Base in March.

The base is nestled in a hollow in the lowest part of California’s Antelope Valley, low sprawling buildings and endless asphalt bleeding seamlessly into bare dirt dotted with alien-looking Joshua trees. Roads stretch endlessly straight across the flat valley bottom, extending in a grid towards the mountains on every horizon. There hasn’t been an antelope spotting in decades.

But there are gulls.

Tony’s busy somewhere in China, so even though the Malibu house is only an hour away Down Below (and yes, he can hear the capitalization), Rhodey stays up in the desert, lets himself settle in and explore, learning the place he’ll spend at least the next two years.

He hears that it’s been a dry winter, but the very last day in March the sky grows dark. Heavy black clouds creep over the mountains to the north then tumble down into the valley in a mass, driven by a cold wind with gusts up to 50 mph. Only a few drops fall at first, hitting the hot bare dirt, and strangely enough Rhodey can smell it more than he can hear it. Then there’s a breathless moment, everything growing still, before the sky opens up and the rain pours down in torrents.

The valley isn’t designed for a downpour. Rhodey’s in nearby Lancaster on a grocery run and within minutes the storm drains are overflowing. He’s grateful he leased a truck instead of a more fuel-efficient sedan because now he can drive through thirty inches of water without flooding the engine. When he gets back to his apartment, soaked to the skin just in the run between his car and his door, he makes his mother’s hot chocolate (fortified with bourbon) and sits by the window to watch it pour.

In the wake of that storm, the desert is transformed.

There are broken trees and downed power lines, abandoned buildings falling even further in on themselves; but there’s also bright white snow glinting on the mountain tops, fresh green grass growing on the side of the road. And about a week later, a profusion of poppies.

The California poppy is a modest little thing, small and clinging precariously to the top of the dusty soil, the blossom a simple orange cup that only opens when it’s mild out, on breezy warm mornings. It closes when the afternoon sun starts to bake and the wind turns buffeting. Rhodey finds the flowers charming in isolation or in their little clumps of two or three. They remind him of his baby sister, Michelle.

But the next weekend, on Cal’s recommendation, he takes a drive out to the Reserve. And there he finds the hillsides, bare and brown and lifeless up until this point, entirely covered in a blanket of orange. It’s stunning, just jaw-droppingly beautiful. Rhodey spends the afternoon wandering the dirt paths, taking pictures with the other tourists — detailed close-ups and panoramas attempting to capture the majesty of the mountain peaks stark against the bright blue expanse of sky.

It all makes Rhodey like this base, even more than he expected to. Everybody grumbles all the time, complaining about the heat and dryness, about how ugly it is, about the fact that there’s isn’t a single titty bar anywhere in a 50 mile radius. But even as the temperature climbs, plants going dormant and gulls flying off to cooler pastures, Rhodey feels. . . happiness, pure and simple, buzzing under his skin.

It’s nearly May before Tony calls to say he’s wrapping things up and on his way back.

Rhodey makes the drive down the fourteen at 90 mph, roaring past station wagons and RVs with his windows rolled down and his radio turned up. It’s a long way down out of the mountains, over three thousand feet. When Rhodey comes through the pass into the San Fernando Valley at last he realizes he can smell water.

Not the Pacific — he’s still a dozen miles and another mountain range away from the shore — just the water in the air, nowhere near as humid as Chicago in the summer but palpable compared to Edwards. Rhodey breathes deeply, feeling his lungs opening up, his skin dewing.

Oh there’s smog, and traffic, and the incessant honk of car horns, and so very many billboards; Rhodey has been very insulting about L.A. in the past and he still thinks it’s an ugly place. But it’s very much alive — positively loud in fact, an assault on the senses. Rhodey is coming to realize how quiet the past two months up in the desert have been.

When he hits Pacific Coast Highway and can smell the ocean, that spray of salt and decay, Rhodey lets out a whoop and pounds his steering wheel, grinning. A gull answers.

The gate at the entrance to Tony’s property recognizes Rhodey’s truck and opens for him even before he comes to a full stop. On any other day, Rhodey would have been irritated that Tony had been spying on him again, tracking his purchases, but today he just laughs.

He parks his truck right in front, shamelessly blocking the circular driveway just to be an asshole. Grabbing his duffel and swinging out of the cab part of him is already looking, expecting Tony to throw open the door and run into his arms like he did when they were kids. But they aren’t kids anymore, as the ache in Rhodey’s neck will attest, so he just keeps smiling fondly as he wanders through the house, looking for his man.

Tony’s in his workshop, of course, silhouetted against the endless blue of sea and sky. He’s lost in his own world, hunched over one of the bots as Iron Maiden blasts out of the speakers, and Rhodey just lets himself watch for a minute from the doorway, tracing the delicate motion of Tony’s fingers, the strong line of his back, the tempting trickle of sweat Rhodey can see sliding down his throat.

It’s that last that breaks him, has Rhodey reaching out blindly to turn down the music at the control panel on the wall. Tony looks up.

Rhodey licks his lips and cocks his hip to lean seductively against the wall. “Honey, I’m home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title is a quote from John Muir's _The Mountains of California:_ "Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn."


End file.
